Egregors, Memes, and Transformation - An Exercise in
Speculation

You won't find the word 'egregor' in your dictionary. It is an obscure
word which you would only have come across if you have studied magical
philosophy.

To define it will take a bit of effort, but let us begin.

Magical philosophy states that there are two realms - one is the world
we know & experience with our senses, the other realm is the astral
plane (sometimes called the 'astral light' to emphasise that this realm
is not delimited by time and space as our physical plane is).

The astral plane is said to contain a variety of beings - gods, devils,
angels, spirits, the souls of the deceased, and old archetypal beings
without names.

The physical and astral realms are said to be closely entwined. Whatever
happens in one realm is reflected by happenings in the other - "as
above so below." Everything we do in physical reality has ripple
effects in the astral reality, and whatever shifting balances or actions
occur there have their echoes here.

It may be that these realms represent two sides of one coin - and are
eternally indivisible.

Ritual magic is based on the belief that we here can influence
the astral plane & can persuade beings there to carry out actions
on our behalf. (A ritual magician will ask an agency in the other realm
to carry out
actions for them. Often - since Western ritual magic arose from the
Christian and Jewish religious traditions - these agencies will be angels
or archangels.1)

1. I have seen books containing classifications of the heavenly
hosts - and the names of thousands on thousands of angels.

This brings us a bit closer to our definition.

Ritual magicians believe in a kind of 'practice effect.' Astral beings
are said to be impressed by rituals (as we ourselves often are), and
the more often a particular ritual is performed the better it works.
Conceptually it is like the ritual is gradually wearing a path through
the astral plan & making it easier to reach the destination & recipient.
(Alternatively - the better you know a ritual the less you have to concentrate
on remembering the words & actions, and the more energy you can devote
to generating the appropriate mindstate.)

Astral space is a dimension of mind. (Magicians are inevitably dualists
so that mind is always seen as a separate thing from brain.) Astral space
is altered by thought, intent, imagination and belief. With our minds
we can, it is said, alter the stuff of astral space - and this includes
the stuff with nascent awareness!

We have reached the final furlongs. We can theoretically animate astral
stuff - give it life and consciousness - all that is required is imagination
and belief. If we believe in a 'god' (notice the small 'g') - our power
will animate the stuff of astral space to bring this 'god' into being.
This god will take on (in some measure) whatever powers we believe
it to have.

Even imagined gods have real power!

This is what egregors are! They are the beings animated and given
awareness through the thoughts of human beings over thousands and thousands
of years.

II. Memes:

I last mentioned memes in my "Philosophy of History" essay
in "RM18" (Oct. 2000) where they were defined as: "a sort
of 'cultural virus' which spreads an idea, behaviour, style or usage
through a culture." [p.3.]

Sure we know how memes are spread - through word- of-mouth and the actions
of the media, but where do they come from?

Memes are a sort of 'infectious idea' and like all ideas they arise
in someone's brain.

Where do ideas come from? They come from the playful manipulations of
conscious thought - they come from the creative process.

Genuine creativity requires conscious exploration and manipulation of
our "working model of the world."This working model was described in "RM9" [April
1999] in my essay "Is There Meaning in Dreams?" The model has these
elements:

Memories.

Sensory data.

Our 'working models' of people we know.

Vicarious details derived from books, movies, etc.

Thoughts, fantasies, dreams.

What we have learnt, facts we know, heuristics we have worked
out.

'Mental metadata' - our largely subconscious knowledge
of our model which enables us to find our way around
and use the
model.

Links leading deep down into the unconscious, and

Mechanisms for drawing up stuff from the deep unconscious.

It is generally believed that we have a conscious mind (the stuff we
are actively working with & our surface thoughts) and an unconscious
mind2.

2. There are some schools of psychology which deny the existence
of an unconscious.

I wrote many moons ago:

Jungian psychology is very simplistic. In reality our mindspace contains
many 'selves' - the ego, agents such as shadow and anima (you can think
of them as being analogous to "software agents"), semi-automated
personas (you can think of them as "robots" - inactive most
of the time, but which we can operate when we need to), partially deconstructed
former-selves (including the child you once were), constructs (psychological
inventions, characters), and outsiders (which includes, dare-I-use-the-term,
our resident "demons".)
[BBS Message - Feb. 1995 - reprinted as part of "Torchlight in a
Dark Space" in "RM4" - Jun. 1998]

In classical Jungian psychology all our individual unconscious minds
merge at the bottom into one shared entity called the collective unconscious.

If mind & brain were identical then this collective unconscious
would be an inherited assembly of brain structures (a basic template),
but if the mind is separate from the brain (albeit connected) - the collective
unconscious could be much more!

The collective unconscious would be a separate mindspace which we can
influence by thought alone.

Sound familiar?

I am not proclaiming that the astral plane & the collective
unconscious are the same3, but they have an uncanny set of properties
in common:

They are not bound by time and space.

They contain intelligent entities.

We can shape their properties by thought alone.

They have common elements - "demons", etc.

3. How would I prove it?

[We normally think of the collective unconscious as something we'd enter
by going into a deep deep sleep, and which lies deep in our minds. We
normally think of the astral plane as some separate spiritual reality
out there somewhere! (But we are dealing with things not bound
by conventional dimensionality - up, down, out there, in here, are all
meaningless. It
is possible for the "other realm" to be both cosmic in scale
and out there, and simultaneously tiny and inside our own brain-space.)]

Now we know that stuff can rise from the collective unconscious into
our personal unconscious, and then make a journey to conscious awareness
as an idea, be acted upon and recorded, and then be sent out into the
world as a 'meme.'

This could be in a sense the ' inner world' pushing through into the
outer world. Astral space acting on physical space.

[A problem here, as you will have realised, is terminology. Physical
reality we have no problem with, but the other realm is much more problematic.
Every word used to describe it has its own associations and many of those
associations are unhelpful. 'Astral plane' has unhelpful associations
of spiritualism and heavy mysticism. 'Collective unconscious' is bound
by the limits of psychological thought - rational brain science at one
extreme and Jungian symbolism at the other. 'Mindspace' and 'inner space'
make it seem too personal, and 'inner space' has the automatic implication
that the realm is small and inside our heads - when this may not be the
whole story. 'Other realm' holds the assumption that it is a separate
place, when we know the two realms are entwined. I will work on the problem
of terminology to find appropriate labels for these realms.]

Suffice to say - memes are born in mindspace and are brought into physical
space - where they cause cultural and other changes.

III. Transformation:

One of my favourite fables (I have no idea of its origin) goes something
like this:

A man is to be shown a glimpse of Heaven and Hell.

He goes to Hell first and sees a long table set with bowls of a delicious
smelling savoury stew. On either side of the table are people. Every
person has a spoon attached to the end of their arm, but the spoon is
so long that they are unable to reach their mouths. They are in the presence
of delicious food but they are unable to eat it. They cry out in anguish
in their hunger and frustration.

The man is much disturbed and asks to be taken away.

He visits Heaven.

Here he finds an identical long table set with bowls of a delicious
savoury stew, and once more he finds people with long spoons attached
to their arms.

But the people are not crying out in hunger and frustration.

They are feeding each other!

The fable has a powerful message - the difference between heaven and
hell is not physical, it is psychological.

Or as Gautama Buddha said: "With our thoughts we make the world."

The Buddha's words work on many levels.

There is the notion of 'optimism' and 'pessimism.' There can be two
people in near identical situations - and one sees their life as promising
light, while the other sees their life as leading into darkness.

This is why self-help gurus harp on about "the power of positive
thinking", eliminating negative self-talk (e.g.. "I'm bloody
helpless at this!"), transforming pessimism into optimism - and
making use of the courage this gives you to change your life.

This change isn't easy - it takes continuing effort to break negative
habits, but break them we can. "Assume a virtue if you have it not" -
and in time the role-play will become the reality.

On another level Buddha's words also reflect the reality that the world
around us has been shaped by the people in it. Every building you see
was once an idea in someone's head. Cities, farms, parks, minefields,
detention centres all came into being by people having ideas and putting
them into practice.

(Ideas rarely stay put inside people's heads. They have a habit of getting
out, influencing other people [for good or ill], and changing things.)

It may be that a 'meme' is simply an idea that has been let out of its
brainbox!

Human beings live in a world of ideas as well as a world of stone.

The world we live in reflects uncannily the world that exists inside
our minds. And it is a wounded world! The wounding reflects the dark
fact that everyone of us has a troubled mind.

We all have our psychopathologies - we have all been wounded by the
world and by the sundering of our dreams - and we all have our own ways
of coping with the crap the world sometimes sends us.

Of course some of us are a lot sicker than others - but damn few of
us are well.

Obviously if we want a healed world - a beautiful world, we will have
to heal ourselves. (And it is of course harder to heal ourselves when
so many people around us are mad and are spreading darkness into the
world.)

So - why don't people want to get well?

There are many possible reasons. Here are a few:

1. People don't realise they're sick!

There's a problem with Western Civilisation which I call "living
on the surface." People can become obsessed with surface things
like consumer items, brand-name products, prestigious jobs, the fame
game, and the fattening of bank accounts. (If they cannot nail these
things for themselves, they develop an unhealthy obsession with those
people who can!)

Their obsession is with one dimension of the human experience - the
struggle for status - to the exclusion of others. They rarely think outside
this box - and do not explore other mental realms. They look for all
their solutions in this box.

It is like living all your life in one well-furnished room and being
unaware that the rest of the house is falling down.

These people never realise they are sick because they never travel far
enough mentally to see the disease!

2. Despair and apathy.

People do not get well because they have lost hope. The world seems
dark and there seems to be nothing they can do about it. The best they
can manage is a painful coping.

3. Gone bitter, twisted!

Evil has its own attraction, its own sultry glow - and our capacity
to do evil grows with practice. It can seem an attractive option in a
life too ordinary, but has its own terrible price. One can never be safe
- there is no virtue in one's environment. Evil grows and corrupts around
it (it is a disease which spreads) - and all you meet will be tainted
by its touch. Your associates are not your friends - they'd as willingly
use you as you'd use them - maybe even destroy you. It is the status
game again - in a dark kingdom. Everything valuable on the inside is
lost & you become a slave to the acting out of your own terrible
pain.

*

So if the way to change the world is to change ourselves, how do we change
ourselves?

The bad news is - only we can do it. (No one else can heal us - but
they can give us guidance and loving support.)

The good news is virtue grows! If we make small changes in our character
(more patience, kinder words) we will find it easier to make further
changes. And it does not matter how small we start!

A second requirement is courage. We will have to enter the dark house
because if we continue to hide from the monsters inside us - they will
continue to have power over us. It is only by deliberately facing these
monsters and taking a good look at them - that we can recognise them,
fight or accept them, and have power over them. (Whose mind is it - yours,
or the monsters within?)

We also need courage for the world outside of us - but this will come,
we will be secure [we know about & can control what is in us] and
confident in facing the world.

Sometimes the greatest courage, however, is the courage to begin; to
set aside the familiar and face the unknown challenges of a new journey.

If we are able to break out of the cages described above (evil is the
hardest - it drags you in deeper and deeper like quicksand) - we can
become better and healthier people.

A good & loving person shines a light into the lives of everyone
they meet. (I get smiles from pretty girls I don't even know because
I am generally a happy friendly person.)

Good people can spread goodness to other people and change the world.

All the fantasy clichés are true.

So let's try & change some negative part of ourselves (however small)
into something better! And try of course to be nicer to other people.

Let's get this transformation happening - let's mend ourselves and the
world!